Epilogue: Loose Ends
Taylor was dead. My heart was broken. She'd been so sweet, such an innocent even in her most domme moments, still as intent on pleasure, hers and ours, as ever. It hadn't really been her choice to go where she went, met the end she met, she'd been controlled into agreeing to it, and I'd helped Sati do that to her. We all had, maybe, but that didn't ease the loss - I felt directly responsible, and I wasn't the only one. While tears flowed freely from every one of us, Kelsey and Stu, the two people Taylor had owned most thoroughly, were sobbing uncontrollably.
"Who was she?" Mariano asked, blind and otherwise frozen, bleeding.
"Taylor," Stu gasped.
"Your master bought her and used her, then killed her," Callie said.
"I don't know where I am," Mariano said, "or how I got here, or anything. I can't remember anything." His throat was constricted, saliva and phlegm and seeping blood, and he spat again, the pinkish tinge of his expectorate darker.
"You're dying," I said, and I could feel it. But there was more going on inside Mariano ... he had an active ward, and while it had kept him alive when everyone else (excepting me ... was that Sati's doing or had my exits just been fortuitously timed?) in that house died, his ward was failing. But I could feel it, and feeling it helped me explore it, and exploring it might help me understand it, strengthen it.
"Mariano has a ward," I said. "Can anyone else feel it?" And while the women were feeling for it, I knew he was frozen and blind and having trouble breathing from the same curare-like spell that had afflicted me. And that much I knew how to dispel, so I did.
"Your sight and movement will start coming back," I said. "Your breathing should ease, but I don't know what's melting you inside. We'll try to solve that, but in the meantime, please try not to move."
Mariano groaned. The women were healing him, trying to heal him, and while it helped, whatever was killing him was not stopped, was barely slowed. Understanding his failing ward was the key, and I put myself into it, went inside him, feeling what he felt, feeling what was happening, and it was bad.
"It was just like this with Taylor," Dani said, and Kelsey sobbed afresh, "we were healing her, trying to heal her, but it didn't help."
"You have a ward," I said to Mariano. "It's the only reason you're still alive, but it's failing. Tell me about it, we might be able to strengthen it, hopefully dispel whatever is killing you."
"Our teacher blessed me, at the Hidalgo sanctuary," Mariano said.
"I don't know that place," I said. "What sort of blessing?"
"To keep us safe from many things as we protected the sanctuary," he said. "But when the dark man and his thralls found me in TepoztlΓ‘n, it was no help."
"How did your teacher give this blessing?"
"As we drank iztΔc octli. Pulque."
"What is pulque?"
"A drink sacred to my people."
"What is it made from?"
"Metl. Maguey. Agave. Century Plant. Aguamiel."
"Agave? Like tequila?"
"Yes, but different species, from a different part of the plant."
I thought about that while Mariano groaned. Focus. The man was dying. We had good tequila here, made from blue agave. With limeade and a few drops of Tabasco, it could be so good that in my former life it had sung to me of stupor more than once. My best friend's ultimate flu cure had been tequila, lemon juice, and garlic.
"Bring tequila, lemon juice, garlic, and hot sauce," I said to Stu, and he rose to get some.
Mariano coughed, blood on his lips, groaned.
"What happened after the dark man found you?" I asked.
"I don't remember anything else until I woke and heard you and called out to you and you brought me here," he said. "I can see again, thank you for saving me. Your friends are very beautiful despite their tears. Taylor was fortunate to know you."
"We were fortunate to know Taylor," Callie said softly. She'd come to kneel beside me, just as she had with Taylor. It helped to have her close. She'd taken Mariano's hands in her own, Jess' hands on Mariano's forehead, soothing.
"Thank you, love," I whispered.
"You need to take her back to that house," Mariano said. "Let her spirit leave from her place of torment, let your love help her spirit come to peace there." He coughed again, groaned more deeply.
My focus was back inside Mariano, gathering his tattered ward. Stu returned, with a glass. The hot sauce was from Xalisco.
"Valentina," Mariano said. "Bueno."
I smashed a garlic clove in the glass and mixed Mariano a drink. "Sip," I said. "I doubt it will cure you, but I want to see what it does, how it affects your ward, if at all."
Mariano spat, sipped, made a face. Blood probably didn't improve the flavor, which I imagine was pretty close to straight lemon juice. But he had another sip, then another, then he groaned. I can only imagine the impact of citric acid and capsicum on a dissolving esophagus.
But inside, there was change.
The lemon juice and the hot sauce might've been a mistake, the garlic wasn't, but magic was happening with the tequila. An attenuated, abortive magic, but it was there and I followed it, reaching for the glass, drinking down everything but the garlic.
"Smash another garlic clove in the glass," I said to no one in particular, "then more tequila." Really, at that point, deep inside Mariano, inside his thoughts, feelings, memories, pain, sharing them with all the women here, I had no eyesight myself, like my own personal Fantastic Voyage.
